Rise of the Shadow Lords (Blade of Shadows)

Prologue Severen

They all screamed the same.

Every Shadow Lord I’d unmade ended on that same jagged cry—raw, guttural, animal.

It sheared through the iron dusk—the cold, gray-metal light that always settled over the Dreadhold like a blade about to fall.

It wasn’t meant for ears; it raked the lungs, buckled the heart, and when it ricocheted through the Dreadhold’s black halls, it declared them dead long before my eyes confirmed it.

Tonight, the last of them broke on that note, a nerve severed.

Silence followed like a grave slammed shut.

I listened, hollow, like a man who already knew how every song must end.

Gareth writhed on the altar, shackled in black iron.

The chains bit deep, forged hatred driven into stone that remembered a thousand betrayals.

His blood ran thick with Noctyss brew, soaked marrow-deep, crawling through him like winter rot, like shadows tearing free of their host. His body convulsed, not with hope, but with that mechanical twitch of dying instinct—the kind that knew too late it was finished.

His wounds gaped wide, hissing in the brazier’s spitfire glow.

The shadows recoiled from him, refusing to touch what the Noctyss now owned.

I forced it down his throat while he screamed.

It thrived inside him still, vicious and unrelenting.

The Tome of Shadows thrashed against his chest as I pressed it down.

Its leather was swollen with pride’s ink, names carved in arrogance, commands etched like chains now snapped and useless.

Yet it bucked in my grip like a starved beast, desperate for the master who once fed it.

The smell was foul—blood, mildew, and that strange animal tang of flesh that thought itself divine.

Salt circled Gareth’s feet, burned marrow smoldered, sea-stench and grave-dust thick in the air.

My fingertips dripped with the blood I carved to open the grooves; it ran into the stone, whispering to the dark, binding it here.

The chamber closed around us like a great beast exhaling, its breath filling every corner.

“Where?” Gareth rasped, his voice a tangle of cracked teeth and fever, each word snagging in his throat like a hook. “Where did you find my bloodline?”

I leaned close until his breath scalded my tongue with rust and sickness. My whisper whittled deeper than any blade.

“Don’t worry,” I murmured. “Your daughter remembers nothing. Not the screaming. Not the shadows.”

His eyes flared wide, veins straining, rage boiling beneath skin gone as pale as ash. The chains held, trembling.

His scream wasn’t a sound—it was a shattering. Rage and agony fused into one raw rupture that tore through the chamber like a fault line splitting. He thrashed against the restraints until flesh divided, blood slicking the stone in hot ribbons.

“You… monster—”

“Yes,” I breathed, and smiled.

Blood bubbled at his lips, thick and blackening. “Severen… you will not have us all. You may have taken me… Marianna… the others—but your reign will fall. Two will rise. Two will come for you.”

I smiled wider, teeth catching torchlight like drawn steel.

“Let them come for me,” I whispered. “For I already know their names. Salvatore. Lazarus. I have watched them since the hour they first cried.”

His fevered glare trembled, but the words still scraped free. “I know you fear them,” he rasped. “They will grow older. They will grow stronger. And when they do, they will come for you.”

I bent close until his breath grazed me, thick with iron and something long-forgotten. “No,” I said, soft and certain. “They won’t come for me. I’ve made sure of that.” My smile stretched slowly and cruelly. “They won’t come for me… because I’m already there.”

Gareth’s breath caught. Rage flickered in his eyes like the last ember of a dying pyre.

“I don’t need to wait for them to find the Dreadhold,” I murmured, the words curling like smoke.

“I’ve slipped into their lives through cracks no one sees—whispers in the dark.

Gentle nightmares. Shadows at their windows.

I let them see things that aren’t there, then vanish before they scream.

I am the fear they can’t name, the hunger blooming behind their ribs.

They don’t know me, not yet. But I am already teaching them,” I warned.

“They think the world is cruel,” I continued, voice as dry as ash. “But it’s me. I’ve shaped every wound, every silence. And when the time comes—when they think they’ve found their strength, their purpose… I’ll be waiting.”

Gareth’s wrists tremored. The chains clinked as he tried to rise, fury scraping through his shredded voice.

“You poison them from afar,” he choked. “Twist their blood. But they will find the truth. And when they do…” His breath rattled. His eyes blazed one last time, burning out against the dark. “…they’ll be the fire that ends you.”

I leaned in until the torchlight cut harsh lines across my face. “No, I won’t give them the chance. They will never reach that power. They will never become Shadow Lords. I will end them the moment they think they’ve found it,” I paused, drawing a deep breath.

“Before they can ever raise a blade… I’ll bury it in them first.”

He stared, breath shallow, hatred spilling from him like blood from a split vein. “You are no king,” he spat. “You’re a butcher in robes.”

I smiled. “Butchers get things done.”

From my sleeve, I drew a sliver of glass and scored patient lines along his ribs. Each incision was a phrase the tome could read. Where Noctyss met flesh, the cuts hissed, black smoke crawling from the wounds. I spoke the old syllables—words that tasted of ash and tide—and the chamber drank them.

When I signed his name in my blood, the pages trembled. The name was the lock the tome waited for—a child’s naming that tied flesh to fate, the one whispered that opened its mouth. The leather leaned forward as if listening; the ink on the page stirred like something waking.

It took him without ceremony. Shadow unspooled from tendon like smoke pinched between two fingers; a name tore from his throat and bled into paper. His scream thinned and folded beneath the sound of ink drinking life. For a single long breath, the world narrowed to pages feeding.

“Your days are numbered,” he croaked, raw from the bindings. “They will end you.”

I closed the tome until its heartbeat slowed beneath my palms. My fingers rested on the cover, warm with the echo of his suffering. For a moment, the thought of flame rose—feed his name to the brazier and watch it vanish—then I let it pass.

Some things were worth keeping.

I slid the tome into its place among the others—quiet trophies bound in silence and failure. Each spine was a monument to a Shadow Lord who once believed he could endure me. As the binding settled, the shelves stirred, a faint rustle, like teeth clicking in recognition.

Let him spend eternity pressed between those who fell before.

Let him learn what it meant to be owned.

Outside, the cliff-wind flayed salt across the black glass of the Dreadhold. I wiped my hands on the altar and decided—clear as a path cut in stone—that it was time to pay Salvatore and Lazarus a visit.

The city below breathed salt and torchlight.

Beneath the fortress’ shadow, life wore its mask of normalcy.

Children chased one another through crooked streets, lovers whispered behind shuttered doors, and merchants shouted in the dust. The sea battered the cliffs like a slow war-drum.

I moved through it unseen, like an audit of shadows.

They were twelve. I knew the number as if it had been etched into me—the age of twelve was enough to bruise, enough to shape memory into scar.

Under a guttering torchlight on a narrow lane, I found them.

Salvatore wore clothes that tried to make him larger than he was; Lazarus stood beside him in rags, ribs sharp beneath threadbare cloth.

Around them circled older boys—fourteen, fifteen—who carried cruelty the way others carried inheritance.

The pack came for sport. They shoved and jeered, laughing at the smallness they expected to break.

Salvatore moved with the mimicry of confidence, a brittle but dangerous mask.

Lazarus moved like one who had survived on scraps, learning to stretch every breath into defiance.

They took more than they should—sandaled feet to the ribs, fists to the jaw, elbows splitting skin.

They hit the ground, iron on cobblestone, and rose again.

Without thought, they folded into each other’s rhythm—two halves of the same battered weapon.

When the beating ebbed, they lay bloodied on the stones. Salvatore’s sleeve was torn; Lazarus’ lip split—blood pooled in the gutter, black in the torchlight.

The older boys loomed, crowing victory before the dust had even stilled.

But when they pressed closer to finish the game, the two younger ones found each other.

Back-to-back—instinct, not plan—Salvatore pushed, Lazarus struck.

They rose again, and again, until the pack’s laughter thinned, until knuckles bruised on bodies that refused to stay down.

The older boys tired first. The younger boys never stopped. Even bloodied and broken, they rose like something the world had already chosen, something too stubborn to die.

I waited until the beating stilled. They lay on the cobbles, bodies pressed to cold stone, lungs rasping like something split open.

A small figure stepped from the gloom as if night itself had spat her out—Amara, the daughter of the man I put down with a smile.

His blood still freckled the flagstones; she walked through it barefoot, calm and stubborn, bearing rags and salves like a parish priest with a ruined altar.

She did not flinch. She did not look away.

She carried a light that the surrounding black would not swallow.

Her hands moved as a ritual. She knelt among the wounded as though tending wounds were a sacrament—cloth pressed to rents, a needle threaded through torn flesh with a motion the world had taught her.

No hesitation. No mercy in the motion, only exactness.

She hummed—less lullaby than low incantation—an odd cadence that filled the alley like a knife held to the throat of silence.

She did not care whose blood soaked her palms. She moved through the ruin as if it had always been her domain.

Salvatore, heir to old names and rusted coin, slipped a crust of bread into Lazarus’ hand with the furtive shame of contraband.

Lazarus treated it like a relic, cheeks hot—not from hunger but from the bewilderment of receiving without cost. In his life, nothing came free.

He tucked the bread beneath his tunic, fingers shutting around it as if the world might reach in and take it back.

Amara brushed a streak of gore from his brow and offered a clumsy joke—soft, awkward, somehow warm. Laughter broke, sudden and crooked, a sound too human for these streets, a single shard of sunlight through storm clouds.

It made my teeth ache to watch—privilege and want, softness and survival braided into a fragile thing. I studied how their fingers found each other in the dark, how that touch became a vow.

Behind me, the darkness convulsed. Kill them. Now. While they are weak. The whispering teeth of shadow scraped at my thoughts.

I could. Two quick cuts. Two names erased. Nothing more.

My hand moved toward the blade—habit, reflex—but the laugh stopped me; Amara’s low humming kept me rooted; the stubborn rise of those boys from the stones held me. I let the steel rest in its sheath. The night curled around my shoulders, displeased and hungry, and I stepped back into its folds.

Some bargains were sealed by taking; some were kept by patient cruelty. Tonight, I chose patience.

But easy was for cowards. I wanted them to learn the shape of loss.

So, I gave them small mercies—bread slipped into a palm, a lip stitched closed, the hiding of a single need—only to leave the right hollows behind—tenderness never offered, a hand that should have steadied them and did not.

One would ache for what should have been his; the other would learn to scrap and take what the world withheld.

Amara would learn to mend wounds, and necessity would carve the compassion from her until it became lean and efficient—hardness grown from duty, the sort that could be steered.

Different wounds. Different hungers. Same results. Easy to bend. Easy to break.

They believed the gods forged their bond. Good. Let that lie swell into legend; it would make their undoing spectacular. For I did not share my power. I would burn this trio from history—Salvatore, Lazarus, and Amara. Their story ended with me. Their hope ended with me.

They laughed now. They thought the night belonged to them. Let them.

Because, one day, their friendship would die screaming.

When that day came, I would remain patient, unblinking, the shadow that learned how to wait. For I would continue to be the last King of Shadows.